Dr Gabriel Crowley presents ‘The importance of storm-burning in shaping and reshaping Australian Tropical Savannas’, on Friday 28 September from 1pm to 2pm.
Over the course of the evolution of Australian Tropical Savannas, the only significant source of fire was from lightning. Fires started in the storm-season, called storm-burns, have different characteristics to fires occurring at all other times of the year.
The contemporary discussion about fire regimes in northern Australia has overlooked storm-burning. A study from Cape York Peninsula shows how reinstating storm-burning can be used to maintain open vegetation structure and prevent invasion of grasslands by Melaleuca viridiflora.
Dr Crowley works on habitat management for threatened species and the communication of scientific information to inform land management. She lived and worked on Cape York Peninsula in the 1990s, where she has ongoing research interests in developing best practice land management. She is the biodiversity information officer with Tropical Savannas CRC.
Find more about past and present SER seminars from the school website.
This seminar takes place in room 1, building 22 (22.01), Casuarina Campus, Charles Darwin University.